Sunday, 6 September 2015

Don't place any bets just yet

Survation is claiming
that its latest poll on EU referendum voting intentions that it has
recorded 43 percent in favour of leaving the EU, with 40 percent wanting
to remain and 17 percent undecided. Discarding the undecideds, that
puts the split at 51 percent for leaving and 49 percent wanting to
remain.

The outers have been languishing in the polls for some time so this is moderately encouraging but nothing to celebrate. Readers will remember that during the election the more Farage and his racist cult grunted about foreigners, the more the polls reflected an in vote. This was with the media in full blitz mode, with Farage walking into every trap. In the final month of the referendum campaign, we may well see similar.

Unless by some miracle Farage is hit by a bus, he will be front and centre soiling the bedsheets for all of us, making it a left/right row over immigration, with the media FUD in full effect. This will be to our cost.

At the moment the media is still half asleep from summer recess, and it's difficult to say what drives this poll bump. It could just as easily be the middle class reaction to the EU's handing of the refugee crisis than anything Ukip's racists have said. Several poignant cartoons in the media have pointed the finger at the EU, which may have prompted a softening of attitudes to refugees and a hardening of attitudes to the EU. Depressingly though, Ukip will take this poll as an affirmation that naked bigotry works and will unleash more of it. This will create a feedback loop as all the anti-Ukip crowd reactivate. Moderate eurosceptic voices will be drowned our by a cacophony of ignorant bilge.

The seventeen percent undecided will likely tune the campaign out until possibly the very last week. Then it becomes a debate over Cameron's credibility rather than any adjacent EU issue. If it is then a toss up as to whether Cameron or Ukip is the more credible option, put simply, we are staying in the EU. For sure, anything can happen, and though much is unpredictable, the one constant in all this is that Ukip will be steadfast in parading their invincible stupidity and pernicious bigotry. Unless there is a counterweight campaign we are done for.